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Pureum Jin: The Real Blue
Although alto saxophonist Pureum Jin would no doubt shrug her shoulders and ask “what's the big deal," the fact remains that she is a South Korean woman playing American jazz and doing so in a way that affirms conclusively that the country's inbred art form is not only universal but gender-neutral. On her debut album, the rather recent graduate of the Manhattan School of Music sounds as assured and comfortable in the idiom as almost any native-born player--male or female—you'd ...
read moreDan McCarthy: City Abstract
The concept of homecoming is inextricably linked to the music that Dan McCarthy presents on City Abstract. Recorded in May of 2019, shortly after he had returned to his native Toronto after fifteen years in New York, this date finds the vibraphonist bowing to two of his biggest influences: pianist Carla Bley and vibraphonist Gary Burton. Those lodestars provide solid inspiration and clear direction for McCarthy, who works his way through originals and a few choice covers with a balanced ...
read moreHiromi: Spectrum
A beacon for jazz to come, since her adrenaline-pumped debut Another Mind (Telarc, 2003), pianist-composer Hiromi Uehara launches herself into her fourth decade with Spectrum, her second album alone at her Yamaha. The music, she hopes, celebrates the closing of one decade and the opening of the next and, without pause, it does, brimming with all the capricious three-dimensional imagination and invention that indelibly mark many fine recordings--her first solo Place To Be (Telarc, 2010), Voice (Telarc, 2011), ...
read moreInto Each Life Some Rain Must Fall
This week we feature new releases from flutist Haruna Fukazawa, vocalists Svetlana, Emma Frank and Jazzmeia Horn, soprano saxophonist and flutist Jane Bunnett & Maqueque, plus a rediscovered Miles Davis recording, with birthday shout outs to Doris Tauber (composer of “Them There Eyes"), Claire Martin, Tom Wopat, Alyssa Allgood and Lorraine Feather, among others. Playlist The DIVA Jazz Orchestra “East Coast Andy" from The Diva Jazz Orchestra 25th Anniversary Project (ArtistShare) 00:00 Tom Wopat “I Won't Dance" from ...
read moreSolid State: The Story of Abbey Road And The End of The Beatles
Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road And The End of the Beatles Kenneth Womack 288 Pages ISBN: #978-1501746857 Cornell University Press 2019 Reverberating with all manner of interpretations, Solid State is a magnificently ironic title for a book purporting to tell The Story of Abbey Road and The End of the Beatles. Or is it simply to be read at face value? Author Kenneth Womack proffers the technical advancement at Abbey Road ...
read moreKeith Jarrett: Munich 2016
The second coming of Keith Jarrett—post-Chronic Fatigue Syndrome—was well behind him by the time he performed in Munich, Germany in 2016. The piano prodigy is captured in ECM's home town at a Philharmonic Hall solo concert at the end of his European tour. His improvisational skills in top form, he displays his genius across twelve extemporaneous compositions and three encores, on the two-disc set Munich 2016. For this recording, Jarrett broke with his frequent practice of live improvisations ...
read morePer Mathisen: Sounds of 3 Edition 2
The power of three indeed proved to be a magic charm for Per Mathisen on the first Sounds of 3 (Losen, 2016), so it's probably only natural that he'd revisit the format sooner or later. What's more of a surprise, perhaps, is how things change. Where that recording was a loud and brash slice of jazz-rock, its colorful sequel slides more toward the jazzy side of that equation. This recording actually tones down the wattage just a little from the ...
read moreParadox Trio - The Balkan Side of Downtown NYC
At some point in the '90s Balkan-tinged jazz was all the rage in the downtown scene that gravitated around the Knitting Factory and the Bell Café. Whereas many of the bands that were at the forefront of that movement are gone, a quarter century later, the Paradox Trio and its unique blend of jazz and creative improvisation with the melodies, modes, and rhythms of Balkan, klezmer, Celtic, and Gypsy folk music traditions are stronger than ever. Featuring Matt Darriau on ...
read morelisa liu: Introducing...Lisa Liu
Lisa Liu's Introducing...“ is a great example of one of the subtly exciting things about “vintage" styles: that, no matter how observant, studious and sometimes even intentionally conservative the endeavor can be, human nature ends up evolving them anyway. Liu's general genre is called many things--trad jazz, gypsy jazz, et. al.—but the album is not merely a meticulous recreation of a period, but a capably produced amalgam of different pre-bop styles that she handles both dutifully and skillfully.
read moreGregg Allman: Laid Back Deluxe Edition
Gregg Allman's first solo album, Laid Back (Capricorn, 1973), is the ideal candidate for a Deluxe Edition reissue and remaster. Not only is the record an exquisite, one-of-a-kind piece of work in its original form, but the backstory is eminently worth telling as it sheds light not only on the creation of the album itself, but the fundamental relationship, at the time of the recording, between the Allman Brothers Band and its surviving namesake. Kudos to the curators, ...
read more12 Points Festival 2019
Bimhuis 12 Points Festival Amsterdam, Netherlands September 25-28, 2019 Jazz, as a diverse and heterogeneous field by nature, is represented at each 12 Points edition by young musicians and groups (age 35) with a strong artistic profile and solid and attractive performance capabilities. The festival represents in a nutshell what the next generation is willing and able to contribute. The emphasis is not so much on assumed audience compatibility/acceptability but rather on originality, artistic challenge, ...
read moreKit Downes: Dreamlife of Debris
Kit Downes' ECM debut marked a substantial departure from his earlier recordings with saxophonist Tomas Challenger. Wedding Music (Loop Records, 2013) and Vyamanikal (Slip Imprint, 2016) were rhythmically complex with abstruse melodies that tended toward repetitive patterns and drones. With his ECM title Obsidian (2018), Downes, still on organ, worked in a more solidly constructed environment, imparting Celtic and hymnal qualities. Challenger appeared on only one track of the otherwise solo recording. Downes returns to ECM with Dreamlife of Debris, ...
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